Movie Theater Chain Sues Insurers For “Hundreds of Millions” In COVID Losses

[Harold Hallikainen]

https://insidethemagic.net/2022/02/r...insurers-rwb1/

Movie Theater Chain Sues Insurers For “Hundreds of Millions” In COVID Losses


IN MOVIES & TV

Posted on February 2, 2022 by Rebekah Barton1 Comment
Credit: ABC

Regal Cinemas, a large movie theater chain that has “6,885 screens in 514 theatres in 42 states along with American Samoa, the District of Columbia, Guam and Saipan”, has sued its insurers for “hundreds of millions” of dollars in losses throughout the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Credit: ABC

Related: AMC Theaters Likely to “Deplete Resources” by End of Year
MY VIDEOS

Per a recent NBC 4 Los Angeles article about the situation:

Regal Cinemas is suing three insurers for allegedly failing to honor their policy obligations to compensate the theater chain for business losses suffered during coronavirus-related, government-ordered shutdowns.

The named defendants in the Los Angeles Superior Court suit brought Thursday are Allianz Global Risks US Insurance Co., Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance Co. and Zurich American Insurance Co.
Credit: ABC
Related: Cinemark Movie Theaters to Launch Four-Phase Reopening This Month!

The report went on to share details from Regal Cinemas’ lawsuit, which states, “Regal has sustained hundreds of millions of dollars in financial losses since March 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, including lost ticket sales, concession sales and extra expenses.”

The theater chain has also alleged that they have continued to sustain losses due to staffing shortages as the highly contagious Omicron variant has surged throughout the United States.
Credit: Disney/AMC

Related: Kevin Feige Speaks Out on Marvel Movie Delay Chaos

According to the lawsuit, the insurers denied Regal’s claims in both September and October 2020, and their “refusal to cover Regal’s losses lacks any justifiable basis.”

Regal is not the only theater chain to suffer as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. During lockdown in 2020 and into 2021, theater giants like AMC and Cinemark also struggled, with AMC even selling stock to stay afloat.
Credit: Disney/AMC

Related: PIXAR’s ‘Turning Red’ Abandons Theaters and Heads Straight to Disney+

And, sadly, many locally owned movie theaters throughout the United States were even forced to close their doors permanently.

Now, however, it seems the tide may be turning for theaters, particularly when it comes to major blockbusters like Marvel Cinematic Universe films. When Tom Holland and Benedict Cumberbatch’s Spider-Man: No Way Home debuted on December 17, 2021, it was the “best opening night of all time” for Cinemark.
Credit: Marvel Studios/Sony Pictures

Related: Controversial ‘Mandalorian’ Star Gina Carano Skyrockets on Amazon Prime Video

AMC Theaters Chairman and CEO Adam Aron also expressed excitement regarding moviegoers’ return to theaters for the latest MCU project:

“Needless to say, we are ever so happy to see a record-setting number of people returning to the cinema to capture the magic offered at AMC movie theatres. Yesterday for its opening night [Thursday showings], we hosted some 1.1 million guests to watch Spider-Man: No Way Home at our U.S. theatres. Our congratulations go to Sony Pictures for this wonderfully successful new movie.”
Credit: Sony Pictures/Marvel Studios
Related: CEO Says Disney Must Put “Stake in the Ground” With Movie Releases

As for Regal Cinemas’ lawsuit, no ruling has been issued at the time of publication.

[Steve Guttag]

They probably should go after the government(s) too. I believe it was in Belgium where the industry sued, and won because theatres were treated differently than other indoor businesses without demonstrating that there was no actual basis to declare cinemas more risky than other indoor venues.

[Harold Hallikainen]

By the way, I finally caught covid two weeks ago. I think the most likely place was ice skating. I was wearing a KN95 mask, but no one else was. I think I was always more than 10 feet from anyone. My wife started showing symptoms as mine were fading. The symptoms were muscle ache, fever, and sore throat. I had 3 doses of the Pfized vaccine. I am doing fine now.

Harold

[Carsten Kurz]

Ice skating? Tucson AZ? Didn't you just move there to get out of the cold?

[Harold Hallikainen]

Yes, we moved from the Denver area to Tucson in April of last year. I learned to skate in Denver and like it. Tucson had an outdoor rink downtown in December and January. Now, every couple weeks, I'm driving a couple hours to Phoenix to skate there. Some day I hope to be good at it. I have heard that ice skating can be dangerous, and it appears I did get covid there!

Harold

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Sorry you got COVID Harold. Having recently had a kidney transplant I am very immuno suppressed... until at least late September. I still go out and do stuff. But places like the Grocery or hardware store, I usually go by 7 am to eliminate any big crowds. Same if I go out to eat. I go right when the restaurant opens. Have only been to one movie since the transplant and went to the first show on a Sunday. I was one of 7 in a room with a 50' wide screen. I felt completely safe in there. Are you sure you got the COVID at the skating rink and not somewhere else?

[Harold Hallikainen]

I am not sure that I got it there, but that is the only place I had been without my wife. She got symptoms 5 days after me, so I think I got it somewhere she wasn't. I skated on Friday for 2.5 hours and got symptoms the following Monday and tested positive on Thursday. Louise started getting symptoms on Friday, one week after my suspected exposure, 5 days after my symptom start, and the day after my positive test. My test was a lab test that took a couple days to get results. Louise got a rapid test the day symptoms started. It came back negative. It may have been too soon. Also that test can give a false negative if you are taking biotin, which she takes.

Harold

[Marcel Birgelen]

Yeah, in your condition, I'd really try to avoid catching any of it, even Omikron. Although not all seems lost if you still might catch it. A good friend of my mother is suffering from an aggressive form of cancer and the accompanying chemotherapy, this weakens the immune system dramatically. Despite all measures, she got Omikron a week or two ago, but she only had very minor symptoms until now. Still, no need to play with fire, though...

They probably should go after the government(s) too. I believe it was in Belgium where the industry sued, and won because theatres were treated differently than other indoor businesses without demonstrating that there was no actual basis to declare cinemas more risky than other indoor venues.

Yes, it was Belgium where that happened. While they got the ruling overturned. Going after the government for money will be a very long stretch though and in many jurisdictions, it's technically even not possible to do so, unless you can prove the government operated in bad faith...

@Harold: Not sure what happened here, but there are a bunch of oversized emojis in that story you copied, probably the largest ones I've ever seen.

[Harold Hallikainen]

I see the big emoji's also. I did a copy and paste of the original article. I went in to edit the post and they are not there.

[Leo Enticknap]

I have heard that ice skating can be dangerous...

The one and only time I tried it, I broke my arm and dislocated a knee, and so would agree with that assessment. It was as a child in the 1980s (I would guess I was around 9 or 10), when Torvill and Dean mania was sweeping the UK, and everyone wanted to go ice skating. So my parents took me. The rink was very crowded, and someone ran into me at high speed, causing me to fall against the side barrier. In hospital for a couple of weeks, and in a lot of pain and off school for several weeks after that. That was the first, and last time I ever ventured onto an ice rink.

[Harold Hallikainen]

I started skating two years ago (at age 68) at the free outdoor Christmas rink in Denver. The next year, I bought skates. Someone ran into me the day after I bought my skates. I fell and broke my arm. When the arm healed, I got back on skates, then everything shut down for covid for a few months. Then I was able to get back to skating until March 2021, when we moved to Tucson. No rinks here except for an outdoor rink in December and early January. I skated there a lot and realized I want to do more, so every couple weeks heading up to Phoenix (about 100 miles) for about 4 hours of skating. It is truly amazing to me that it can be done at all. At this point, I'm fine with forward on one or two skates. I can skate backwards on two skates and am working on one. Switching between forward and backward is still not very smooth, so I keep practicing that and backwards on one skate.

So far, my injuries are one broken arm and covid!

Harold

[Frank Cox]

What about stopping?

[Carsten Kurz]

Stopping the whole skating thing for sure would be safer, bones and covid-wise...

What about dancing instead? You could do that all-year round, and without any driving (which adds to the risk anyway).

[Marcel Birgelen]

If Harold like to skate on ice, I guess who are we to tell him he should stop doing that. I have a colleague who likes to ride his mountain bike and he's got one or another injury every other months, yet he doesn't want to quit... Who am I to tell him to go dancing instead?

When I grew up in the northern part of the Netherlands, everybody seemed to be ice skating. I guess that's why they built one of the first modern indoor ice-skating rinks, so they could execute their hobby all year round...

My feet are naturally positioned in somewhat of a V shape, so I never was any good at it, no matter how hard I tried, it would always end in some kind of small to medium disaster. Then again, the amount of accidents with ice skating in general seem to be pretty minor, far less than with stuff like skiing.

I see the big emoji's also. I did a copy and paste of the original article. I went in to edit the post and they are not there.

Well, just yesterday I was fighting with a piece of .net software that needed to fetch an SSL certificate out of the local certificate store, based on thumbprint. The configuration file was saved in Unicode and the thumbnail string started with a garbage character that no normal editor would show. Never thought I'd say this, but kudos to Visual Studio 2022, as this was the ONLY editor that actually indicated a hidden character to be there...

I guess the standard edit window is displaying it in a font that has no entries for the unicode positions those things have been assigned with.

[Frank Cox]

That wasn't what I meant.

Many people who are beginner ice skaters have a lot of trouble stopping, so they collide with the rink boards or are doing the "Yikes, watch out!" thing when they go across the rink.